A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts | Hacker News Reader

A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts

nytimes.com

21 pointsrbanffy21 comments

While the Super Bowl ad they mentioned in the article was tongue in cheek, I was recently discussing with my SO how a gender flipped version of this[0] which seemed to pop up every time I turned on the TV recently would never be allowed

[0]https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wjbM/optimum-locked-out-of-hotel-roo...

Paternity fraud could be solved easily by mandatory paternity tests upon birth.

Paternity tests are accurate, but they are not 100% accurate. Firstly, there's simple incorrect calls. Then, there's a variety of conditions (for example mosaicism) that could cause a man's blood cells to have a different DNA pattern than his skin cells.

Finally, paternity tests are useless in the presence of identical twin men. A twin is not responsible legally for the children of his twin brother. What matters is who had sex with the mother. Any system needs to have ways to solve this.

Personally, I think we should look towards the most well-tested paternity system -- marriage (and the accompanying social stigma of adultery) -- for advice on how to move forward. Paternity tests can be a part of that, but they are not the panacea you make them out to be, including relatively common situations.

>> Paternity fraud could be solved easily by mandatory paternity tests upon birth.

> Paternity tests are accurate, but they are not 100% accurate.

I think most people would consider the problem solved if they were 99% accurate. Also, like all medical tests, a adverse result would require further follow up for confirmation to rule out potentially confounding factors.

I think there's a major issue in normalizing this after birth. If taken to its logical extreme, no man would have immediate absolute indisputable parental rights upon birth. That seems unfair too.

Nor is marriage, unfortunately.

I never claimed marriage was perfect. Merely that it's a model that's worked for many years and is more battle tested than medical paternity testing.

I understand. My point is that you basically need both.

Sure, paternity testing has edge cases. But if the father disputes paternity and the DNA tests repeatedly comes back with no hereditary relationship between the alleged father and child that should be at least grounds to halt child support payments.

Interesting that they're going after "ladies nights" which aren't exactly emblematic of "safe spaces." My impression is that offering women free entry is largely an overall economic decision based on the logic that social spaces like nightclubs will be more attractive to "spenders" (i.e. men) if there are more women there. Interesting to see what would happen to overall culture in that world if entrance fee parity was enforced.

#MeToo is a hashtag women are encouraged to use as a way to share personal stories of sexual violence though. I’m not seeing the equivalent here.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/is...

#MeToo is hardly mentioned in the article, so I'm not sure why you expected to see some kind of equivalent.

The title is a clear play on the hashtag.

And you object to journalists using "clever" titles based on trending topics? I mean, that's probably 90% of headlines. Or do you just find this one particularly objectionable for some reason?

This comes off like an attempt to turn a set of perceived slights into an issue of discrimination. "Men's rights" groups mostly seem to be a reaction against attempts to address institutionalized misogyny. Why is it hard to acknowledge that society has been and still is biased in favor of white men? (disclaimer: I am a white man)

I find this sort of reply irritating. Feminists rightly point out that the fact that female discrimination is far worse elsewhere in the world does not somehow diminish our obligation to address female discrimination here.

So the only way your objection carries any weight is if men (even white men) are not discriminated against at all, ever, at any level of our society. Do you actually believe that to be the case? If so, then I suggest you do some reading.

If not, then we have just as much an obligation to address challenges that men uniquely face as we have to women for the same.

I don't think trying to eliminate policies that discriminate against men is denying that men have privileges. Simply because one group suffers from discrimination more than another shouldn't be a justification to turn around and discriminate the latter. I am Hispanic myself, and I would cringe just as hard at a "Latinx only" sign as I would a "Whites only" one.

You make a fair point. I don't mean to imply discrimination is appropriate in any context, just that groups in power can sometimes frame threats to their privilege as examples of discrimination as a way to resist change [0].

[0] In the Name of Equal Rights: “Special” Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post–Civil Rights America https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5893....

But this is clearly not even remotely the case in this story. All of the defendants covered in the story had explicitly discriminatory policies. What motivated you to write that groups seeking to eliminate inequalities that harm men "mostly seem to be a reaction against attempts to address institutionalized misogyny" in response to this story? Why did you feel this was remotely relevant to bring up in response to explicit discrimination?

Ultimately I think a lot of the hostility towards men's rights is counterproductive for people that want gender equality. This hostility had made a lot of people believe that feminism only purports to strive for equality and in reality only strives to advance the interests of women, often at the expense of men (as opposed to the real definition of feminism, which is gender equality for all).

Your logic is "white men have some privileges, therefore white men have absolutely no prejudice against them and absolutely no problems in society". This is sexist, racist, bad logic.

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